When euthanasia is the kindest option

Obviously, the goal of every wildlife rehabber is to save the animals brought to him or her for care so that they can be released back into their natural habitat as soon as possible. Sometimes, however, the only release we can offer is a quick and painless death.  This frequently horrifies the public, who often don’t quite grasp that we’re not miracle workers, that there are some animals whose suffering needs to be ended immediately and that humane euthanasia is the kindest option we can offer those animals.

This was the case for an adult male great horned owl who came in last week. Fortunately, his rescuer, a DNR employee,  knew from the outset that his chances for survival were slim to none and acknowledged to me that he simply didn’t want to see the bird suffer needlessly.

The poor GHO was found near the road and allowed his rescuers to toss a blanket over him without even a token fight. For a GHO, this isn’t a good sign. He was rail-thin, with a keel (breastbone) you could cut yourself on. He had massive head trauma and a severely infected left eye, filled with blood and pus and hard as a marble. The cornea was basically one huge ulcer, with several smaller ulcers beginning to form. 

Upon intake I was pretty sure the eye was beyond help, but sometimes severe eye infections and ulcerated corneas can be treated successfully so before taking any final action, I took the GHO to Smalley’s Animal Hospital, where vet Peggy Hobby confirmed my initial assessment. Given the advanced state of the infection and ulceration in his eye, coupled with his severely depressed physical condition, any attempt to treat him would have just prolonged his agony and delayed the inevitable.  We opted to give him a quick death with dignity.

Let me explain here that rehabbers and vets don’t make these decisions lightly. We can record them and discuss them matter-of-factly, but that’s because we’ve learned to maintain some degree of clinical distance, to retain our sanity. (And I know many people use the term “clinical detachment”. I refuse to use that term; to me it implies a degree of separation from the situation that I personally don’t possess. “Clinical distance” seems more accurate: we’re a part of the situation but we have to step back and view it and act upon it from some degree of distance.) Anyone who says to you that euthanasia is something you just get used to is either a bald-faced liar or doesn’t need to be rehabbing—or perhaps both. You NEVER get used to it; if anything, as your experience and skills increase, you find it more difficult. And I can promise you, it’s not the releases we lie awake at night and toss and turn over. It’s the ones we lose that haunt us.

Lest I leave you all depressed with that philosophical treatise, however, let me offer encouraging news on the screech. She (yes, we decided based on her weight “he” is a “she”) is still not eating on her own but she is keeping down what I force-feed her.  I continued consulting other rehabbers last week, and Kathryn Dudeck of Chattahoochee Nature Center suggested that she might be egg-bound (meaning she couldn’t lay an egg). Peggy x-rayed her to see if we could see any eggs or egg fragments, but all the x-ray, obtained over the vigorous protests of the screech, showed was a distended belly.

Kathryn and I debated the possibility of parasites, which we both felt should have presented much earlier in the screech’s stay at LWR. Kathryn theorized that maybe optimum diet and stable temperatures had slowed their development, so we agreed that perhaps treatment for parasites was in order.  I’m still not seeing any worms in her poop, but I also don’t have a microscope to do a float to look for parasites too small to be seen with the naked eye.

What we do know is her poop is looking much more normal and she’s more alert and active, even if she hasn’t resumed self-feeding yet.  So at the very least, as Kathryn pointed out, there was some sort of blockage that has either resolved itself or has been resolved by the meds and fluids Madam Screech has been getting. She felt feisty enough last night to give me the stinkeye!

Finally, for those who might be wondering about flight pen progress, I’m sorry to report there is nothing to report yet. Because volunteers didn’t exactly beat down the doors when I asked for volunteer labor (I had one person offer—you know who you are, and I thank you!) and because professionals could knock both pens out in a much shorter time, I’ve been in contact with seven different contractors.  One took a copy of the plans to work up an estimate and was never heard from again. One waited two weeks to call me back and say they might be available and then never got back with me. Three never bothered to return my calls. One informed me they didn’t do small jobs like that. And the final one called yesterday to say they wouldn’t  be available to look over the site and plans until later this week. At this point I’m about ready to start digging a damn posthole or two a day and doing all the work myself, bit by bit—and it looks like it might actually come down to that, to be honest.